Analysis of ‘The Death of a Moth” Essay

November 7, 2017 Communication

Virginia Woolf is a British author born in 1882 and she died a hideous decease in 1941. She jumped unto River Ouse have oning an greatcoat filled with stones. She committed self-destruction as she was depressed and has a pessimistic feeling towards life due to a mental unwellness she has been cursed with. She wrote ‘The Death of the Moth’ in 1942. This essay contains a broad assortment of rhetorical devices that makes it fascinating. Although the essay is short. she wrote a elaborate narrative with an implicit in metaphor. In this non-fictional essay. she efficaciously conveys her thoughts through the usage of nonliteral linguistic communication.

She uses an drawn-out metaphor in which the moth symbolizes worlds in the manner it lives its life. The essay entraps the reader into the surpassing battle of our ain mortality. Throughout the essay. the reader becomes cognizant of the calamity that all life has to offer and that is the inevitable decease. The subject is non lucid in the beginning. But in the latter portion of the essay. one can infer that the moth really symbolizes worlds and life. In the essay. she illustrates the battle between life and decease.

Her intent in composing this transition is to picture how hapless life is in the face of decease. and to earn regard for the amazing power that decease has over life. Throughout the essay. decease is described from many different angles. The intent of this is to remind us of the power that decease has over life. She shows us the decease is certain and ineluctable. She does non convey this message with logic. but with alternatively with emotions. feelings. and inexplicit thoughts. She makes us experience the decease of the moth to leave us a more complete apprehension of the ageless power of decease.

She uses several different types of figurative and literary linguistic communication. As mentioned earlier. the essay is an drawn-out metaphor. She used simile several times. For illustration. “… until it looked as if a huge cyberspace with 1000s of black knots in it had been cast up into the air. ” In this simile. she describes a assemblage of crows in the trees outside her window. In add-on. she uses correspondence. which occurs when she writes: “That was all he could make. in malice of the size of the downs. the breadth of the sky. the faraway fume of houses. and the romantic voice. now and so. of a soft-shell clam out at sea.

” A good illustration of exaggeration is present when the writer describes: “One could merely watch the extraordinary attempt made by those bantam legs against an onset day of reckoning which could. had it chosen. hold submerged an full metropolis. non simply a metropolis. but multitudes of human beings… ” By utilizing such a simple creature’s battle against decease as a metaphor. Woolf creates a beautiful essay on the breakability of life. Her simpleness and item keeps her essay from going overcomplicated. excessively dramatic. or dejecting. It was a surprisingly light and meaningful essay on an event that most people would likely overlook.